High-speed rail: creating the authority
Judge Quentin Kopp, a former member of the California State Senate, told Bob Zadek that in 1992 he introduced legislation to create the California High-Speed Rail Commission, after experiencing high-speed rail in France and learning of Japan’s system begun in 1964 for the Tokyo Olympics. The bill passed both the Senate and the Assembly but was vetoed by Governor Pete Wilson, who took the position that California had enough governmental agencies Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018).
Kopp said he returned in 1994 with a bill establishing a committee to evaluate the desirability and feasibility of high-speed rail; the governor signed it because he appointed all the committee’s members. The committee reported about a year and a half later that high-speed rail was both desirable and feasible, and in 1996 Kopp introduced the bill establishing the California High-Speed Rail Authority. That bill passed both houses and was signed; it let the governor appoint five of the nine members, with the Senate appointing two and the Assembly two Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018).
Zadek asked whether the committee study was political cover; Kopp said it was a bona fide study, that he became a Superior Court judge in San Mateo County on January 1, 1999, that he was not a participant in the study, and that nobody criticized its conclusions from an intellectual standpoint. Kopp described the planned system as two segments: San Francisco to Los Angeles, then Anaheim; and a second section extending from Los Angeles to San Diego and from Merced to Sacramento. He said a state senator initiated a general obligation bond of $9 billion 950 million, initially slated for the November 2004 ballot, postponed to 2006 because of that year’s recall and the election of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and postponed again to 2008 at the governor’s request. It passed in November 2008 on a 52% to 48% vote Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018).
The promises and the route
Under Zadek’s questioning about what Proposition 1A promised voters, Kopp said the bond measure contained mandatory speeds — San Francisco to Los Angeles in two hours and 40 minutes, Fresno to San Jose in 65 minutes — and a provision barring construction of any segment unless all money needed to complete it was guaranteed. He said high-speed rail must be electrified and must have track dedicated only to high-speed rail, and that the ballot measure prohibited taxpayer subsidies for operating costs Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018).
Kopp said the route of the first phase ran San Francisco to San Jose, over the San Luis Pass to Merced, down Highway 99 into Fresno, then Bakersfield, through Palmdale and the Burbank Airport, to downtown Los Angeles. He said the alternative of following Interstate 5 was rejected because there are no cities on it, and that ridership was expected from Merced, Fresno, Bakersfield and Kern County. He then said the plan went wrong when politicians representing expensive communities in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties — Atherton, Palo Alto and Menlo Park — moved to prevent the taking of additional right-of-way for a separate high-speed rail corridor. Kopp named a member of Congress, Anna Eshoo, along with a then-state senator, Joe Simitian, and a then-assemblyman, Richard Gordon of Redwood City, as sponsoring legislation and taking action to remove the authority’s legal ability to buy land for its own right-of-way. Zadek characterized Proposition 1A as a bond measure any thoughtful voter could support; Kopp said private investors in systems worldwide typically wait until a system is at least 50% built, sometimes 60% or 75%, and that the financing plan contemplated the bond as the foundation alongside federal and regional funds and private investment of perhaps 25%. He said Congress in the 1980s passed legislation, authored by Lynn Schenk of San Diego, laying out seven high-speed rail routes, and that Congress eventually appropriated money for high-speed rail in 2009 in the stimulus bill Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018).
AB 5 and independent contractors
In a 2020 episode on worker classification, Zadek gave what he called a non-legal summary of AB 5, which he described as a bill passed by the California legislature and the law in California, with New York, New Jersey and other states considering similar legislation. He said AB 5 provides that drivers for Uber and Lyft — and, as the guest would explain, workers in hundreds of other activities — are employees, and that the legislature was deciding by statute that people who consider themselves independent contractors are not. Zadek described the pre-AB 5 arrangement in which such workers set their own hours, were paid a fee rather than a wage, paid their own Social Security taxes, and did not contribute to unemployment insurance funds, and he said the legislature’s reclassification as employees would require 40-hour weeks, unemployment insurance benefits and Social Security benefits, causing the flexibility of the business model to fail Terrible New Worker “Protection” Laws Threaten the Gig Economy (2020).
A 2021 episode lists AB 5 among the topics Zadek discussed with California State Assemblyman Kevin Kiley concerning the movement to recall Governor Gavin Newsom, along with Newsom’s use of emergency powers during the COVID-19 pandemic, school and business closures, and allegations of corruption in state contracting. The excerpt for that episode names AB 5, independent contractors and the California Legislature among its topics but contains no statements by either speaker The Case for Recalling Gavin Newsom (2021).
Post-Janus restrictions on officials’ speech
In a 2020 episode on SB 3550, guest Jeffrey Barke described having been an elected school board member for 12 years with Los Alamitos Unified School District, which he placed in Orange County, and said there are over 1,000 independent school districts in California, nearly all unionized. He recounted that the Supreme Court ruled in June of 2018 in Janus that public employees in unions could no longer be required to join a union or pay union dues as a condition of employment, and said that a section was then passed by the California legislature and signed into law — numbered 3550 — under which elected officials were told to tread very lightly and were not allowed to have a conversation that could potentially deter or discourage a member from joining the union California’s New Union Gag Order Violates 1st Amendment (2020).
Zadek argued that Janus was not merely an economic case: he said the Supreme Court has long held that compelled contributions to an organization expressing a political view one may not agree with amount to compelled speech, which is as prohibited as denial of speech, and therefore Janus was a free speech case. Barke agreed with him completely, said the union is free to use dues for political speech, and that employees now have the right to opt in or not with their dollars. Barke said that under 3550 an elected official no longer had the right to speak freely about the Janus case or any other union activity, on pain of an unfair labor practice lawsuit, and that he could be sued — as could the board and the district — over a chance conversation at a supermarket, forcing limited general funds to be spent on defending a lawsuit. He said he could not imagine that anyone believes the government should be allowed to tell an elected official what to say or not say to constituents California’s New Union Gag Order Violates 1st Amendment (2020).
The Common Sense Party and legislative access
In a 2023 episode, Tom Campbell said the Common Sense Party’s focus was the California legislature, which he called a very reasonable aspiration. He said the party’s appeal to Democrats and Republicans alike was the question of whether there is room for a candidate who does not sign on to the orthodoxy of all of his or her party’s positions — a pro-life Democrat, or a Republican strongly interested in preserving the coastal beauty and ecology of the coast who otherwise found more affinity with the Republican Party on taxation and regulation. Campbell said he asks people whether they favor giving such a person a chance to serve in the legislature even if that person will not get the support of the two major parties, and he said a Democrat wanting to be more pro-business and a Republican wanting to be more pro-environment or pro-choice might each be good candidates for the party. He described the common thread as the willingness to tolerate, and even celebrate, an individual standing up for his or her own views Moving California Forward with the Common Sense Party (2023).
Across episodes
The episodes do not develop a single argument about the legislature so much as apply different lenses to it. Kopp, in the earliest episode, speaks as a former legislator recounting his own bills and describes the body as the instrument through which a good idea was advanced and then captured by other politicians; Zadek draws out of his account a tribute to Proposition 1A as a template for protecting taxpayers. In the 2020 and 2021 episodes, the legislature appears as the source of AB 5 and of the post-Janus restriction on officials’ speech, with Zadek framing AB 5 as the legislature overriding workers’ own classification and Barke framing 3550 as silencing elected officials. Campbell, in 2023, treats the legislature as the institution his party wants to enter. What changes between the earlier and later treatments is the standpoint — Kopp’s inside account of sponsoring legislation gives way to outsiders contesting what the legislature has enacted — and each of these positions is advanced by a different speaker, with no guest revisiting another’s episode Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018) Terrible New Worker “Protection” Laws Threaten the Gig Economy (2020) California’s New Union Gag Order Violates 1st Amendment (2020).
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe the legislature’s structure, membership, leadership, session calendar or district map, nor any bill other than AB 5 and the measure numbered 3550. They do not give the outcome of the recall effort against Newsom or any of the contracting allegations the 2021 episode lists as topics. Kopp’s account stops mid-story at a break before the second half of his interview, and the 2020 classification episode breaks off as the guest begins to speak.